


I Heard the Rain, I Heard your Heart

by yet_intrepid



Series: oh rise with me forever [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Tatooine, Tatooine Slave Culture, Twelve Days of Fic-mas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 07:17:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8880949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: The pull’s stronger than it’s been in years. When she and Master Obi-Wan visited Tatooine on the Council’s orders, it would flicker up like this at times. But here, now, staring at the little shack that hides in an outcropping of rock—the Force fills her like a hunger, like the need for gentle hands over a wound, like she’s in a firefight and there’s a youngling to protect.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt from theselfieofdoriangrey: "honestly anything with Ahsoka, I would love to see you write her." Well, here you go - probably doesn't make much sense without the rest of the series, though, sorry.
> 
> Title from "New Mexico's No Breeze" by Iron and Wine:
> 
> _God gave you bobwhites and the good kind of black night_   
>  _When you left Santa Fe_   
>  _New Mexico's no breeze and you were so nineteen,_   
>  _You were blowing away._

Ahsoka lets her speeder sputter to a halt, patting it absent-mindedly as she hops off and checks to make sure she’s got everything. Lightsabers, check. Satchel of dwindling food supplies and rough first aid kit, check. Speeder key card, water pouch, that old pull in the Force—yep, pretty sure she’s got everything.

The pull’s stronger than it’s been in years. When she and Master Obi-Wan visited Tatooine on the Council’s orders, it would flicker up like this at times. But here, now, staring at the little shack that hides in an outcropping of rock—the Force fills her like a hunger, like the need for gentle hands over a wound, like she’s in a firefight and there’s a youngling to protect.

She steps towards the little house, keeping a wary eye on her surroundings. Rare clouds have crept over the sky and the desert around her is still, disturbed only by wild gusts of wind. Ahsoka adjusts the scarf over her head to shield her eyes better from the rising dust.

As she squints, she makes out a form—someone standing in the door of the shack.

Ahsoka’s heart pounds and the Force pulses and blast, what is she going to say? What is she even here to do? She’s just a padawan, a padawan who’s not even a padawan anymore because she left, and the Jedi won’t rescue her anymore if she gets herself in trouble. But _trust the Force_ , that’s what Master Obi-Wan had always said, and trusting the Force led away from him, led her here.

She’s in hailing distance now, but she can’t get herself to speak. She just keeps walking, and as she does she feels a drop of rain on her bare arm. And then another, and suddenly she’s soaked, the rush of water all around her.

“Come in!” calls the figure in the doorway. “Child, come inside!”

And Ahsoka runs, because it’s wet and she’s shivering already and the sand is clumping, sticking to her shoes. And the Force is in her feet and it’s in her eyes and she can _feel_ this woman in the doorway, the way she used to feel Master Obi-Wan, except where Master Obi-Wan was all cautious concern and discipline, this woman is—

She stumbles through the doorway and the woman catches her, holds her, and Ahsoka has never felt the Force like this before, warm and happy and full of _love_. She pulls back, takes a look at the person she’s hugging—a human, her dark hair plaited over her shoulder, her wrinkled face kind.

“I knew you were coming,” the woman says. “But I do not know your name.”

“I’m Ahsoka,” Ahsoka says. “Ahsoka Tano. Are—are you a Jedi?”

The woman laughs. “I’m Shmi Skywalker, that’s all. A mother, an escaped slave. A bit of a revolutionary, perhaps. Many things, but not a Jedi.”

“But the Force,” Ahsoka says, pulling her soaked scarf from her head. “I felt you in the Force.”

“It’s not only Jedi that have the Force.” Shmi reaches to pull the door shut, then changes her mind and lets it hang open, drops of rain straying into the house. “I’m not trained in it, as they are, but I can feel it in ways that they cannot. You came to help, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” says Ahsoka. “I want to help. I came here before when the Council sent my master to investigate if there were crimes against the Republic, and I—I wanted to stay. I could feel—it was like the Force needed me to stay.”

Shmi’s brow creases. “You came alone? All this way?”

Ahsoka nods, the weight of it washing over her again. “I left the Order.”

Shmi puts a hand on her shoulder. “But you found us.”

The rain keeps pounding down, filling the desperate ground like this love is filling Ahsoka, filling the need in the Force that has ached in her all this time.

“I want to help,” she says again. “I want—”

“There will be time for that after the rain,” says Shmi, guiding Ahsoka into the little house and sitting her down at a table. Ahsoka can feel what she does not say: rain means rest here; it means hope, new beginnings.

“It is no coincidence, Ahsoka Tano,” Shmi says, “that you came to us with the storm.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Heard the Rain, I Heard Your Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9287147) by [vinrebelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinrebelle/pseuds/vinrebelle)




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